In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

3The Rights of Provision A decade has passed since Canada signed the Convention. How well has Canada performed in implementing children’s rights of provision? Has significant progress been made in actualizing the rights of the child to economic welfare, health care, and child care? We will address these questions first by reviewing Canada’s record in each of these areas. Finding significant deficits in the record, we then explain why it is imperative that Canada fulfill its obligations under the Convention to take more seriously the rights of provision. Provision of Economic Welfare Canada is given clear direction under the Convention to provide for the child’s right to basic economic well-being and security. Article 6 directs Canada to ‘‘ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child.’’ Article 27 calls on Canada to recognize and implement ‘‘the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral, and social development.’’ And article 4 obligates Canada to undertake appropriate measures for the child’s basic economic rights to the ‘‘maximum extent’’ of its available resources, in accordance with national conditions and within its means. Together, these articles compel Canada to ensure that children do not live in conditions of poverty and deprivation. As the Convention recognizes that parents have primary responsibility for children, it obligates Canada to assist parents and others responsible for the child in providing for the child’s economic needs. But where necessary, Canada also has the direct responsibility to provide for the economic needs of children. Allowing children to live in poverty is clearly at odds with the best interests of the child. The Canadian federal, provincial, and territorial governments have taken a number of positive steps to lessen child poverty.1 First, there has Notes to chapter 3 start on p. 191. / 37 been official recognition of the problem and official commitment to the goal of ending child poverty. In 1989, as the Convention was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, the House of Commons unanimously passed an all-party resolution to seek to eliminate child poverty in Canada by the year 2000. This reflected growing national attention and increasing concern across the country about the effects of poverty on children. Then, in 1990, as a follow-up to the signing of the Convention , Prime Minister Mulroney co-chaired the World Summit for Children , where he and the leaders of seventy-one states not only recognized the problem of child deprivation but also developed a global plan of action for the survival, protection, and development of children. In this global plan, states were to design their own plans, to make resources available for children’s needs, and to recognize the important principle of ‘‘first call for children.’’ This principle boldly stated that the basic needs of children should be given high priority in the allocation of a state’s resources, in hard times as well as good times. The recognition of this principle was very much in keeping with the directive of article 4 of the Convention that state parties undertake measures for children ‘‘to the maximum extent of their available resources.’’ Canada’s expression of commitment was followed by action. In 1991, the federal government announced that it was preparing Canada’s Action Plan to better provide for the basic needs of children and to improve their health, growth, and development. The Plan was described in the government ’s 1992 document Brighter Futures,2 in which the government again recognized the problem of child poverty, noting that in 1990 more than one million Canadian children (or more than 17% of children under age sixteen) lived in low-income families.3 To deal with the problem, the government would work to improve employment conditions for low-income families, and would bolster programs of social assistance and income supplements and support services, especially for single-parent families. The government would also undertake new initiatives, including the introduction of a revised and expanded Child Benefit and the establishment of the Child Development Initiative. The new Child Benefit, which took effect in 1993, consolidated the older system of family allowances and child tax credits into a single taxfree monthly payment. Through the income tax system, lower-income families received more support than previously in the form of monthly tax-free payments to help with the costs of raising children. For example, a family earning less than $20,000 a year with one child...

Share